Monsoons

Indian Ocean Monsoons

The Indian Ocean Monsoons were essential to the Indian Ocean Trade. With their strong gusts of winds, the monsoons made it possible for ships to travel across the oceans waters. This was convenient to traders in SouthEast Asia, India, Arabia, and Eastern Africa.

Monsoon winds in the Indian Ocean are theorized to be discovered by the Greeks, however that fact is debated as many historians logically assume that there were travelers in the Indian ocean before the Greek Empire. Nevertheless, the Greeks did use the Monsoon winds for their travels and trade, the monsoons making it so that Greek trade ships could get for Greece to India to exchange goods. This exchange is one of the first uses of the Indian Ocean as a trade port, the monsoons making sailing much easier.

Indian Ocean Monsoon winds are seasonal: in the summer winds move to the southeast and in the winter the monsoons move southwest. Unlike other very unpredictable storms that may provide a way through other oceans (aka a hurricane that is not only unpredictable but also will potentially destroy your ships) the Monsoons were very reliable. Learning that the winds blew in two directions, that direction alternating every season, wasn’t a hard fact to tackle and quickly the travelers of the route learned how to use the winds to there strength. This ability helped merchants in the future as the maritime traders learned their best time for travel.

Due to the Monsoons, places built ships especially for the purpose of sailing in winds. The dhow would be be the most well known. A dhow refers to a ship with a triangle sail pointed at an angle. These sails made it very easy to catch the winds of the monsoon abeling ships to get goods to ports faster.

One thing that made the Monsoon winds difficult was that  - despite reliably blowing either in a western direction or a southern direction-  the wind doesn’t always blow exactly where the captain wants it to go, The Chinese created a cheat code for that problem, the invention of a compose helped to make the act of figuring out wind direction a lot easy for the naval expeditioners and traders. Originally the compass was made of a square slab with a spoon atop it as to work in terms of magnetic attraction, the purpose originally being a fortune telling device by ancient Chinese fortune tellers in 200 B.C.E.. Not until the 1400’s did the Chinese realize that there fortune telling device was actually a lot better at telling directions than it was at telling a fortune. Thus, when the Chinese constructed their treasure ships and emperor Zheng went out on his first expedition, he installed a compass into his ship. From then on, this instrument grew in popularity, used on ships to navigate their way through the sea trade and the winds that made a lot of that trade available.

Bangladesh was a port city on the Indian Ocean trade, one of the many places that drew in travelers from the trade routes. These areas (Bangladesh, Swahili,etc) thrived, not only in the money gathered from supporting a massively popular trade city but also the ports held monopolies over goods. Monsoon winds were a big help in the building of port cities because they made certain areas a convenient to stop at, for instance Bangladesh was in the middle of Chinese routes, a place that monsoon winds would carry Chinese ships to before the fleets would have to stop and take a break. This helped the port cities grow economically as the increase of travelers meant that there was more people staying in their cities and paying money to them, but it also convenient to the travelers; maritimers now had a place to stay and a place to trade goods.

For a very long time the Indian Ocean was a place of tranquil trade, most ships void of firearms and, amid the pirates that set about to terrorize merchants, trade on the ocean was relatively peaceful. That was until the Portuguese came about. Stumbling into the epicenter of Afro-Asian trade by means of monsoon winds, the Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama --- found himself surrounded by a whole exchange he had never known about. Perplexed by the fact that non-European merchants had managed to keep a trade system so secret over the years, Vasco sought to grasp ahold of the trade. He went back home to gain the support of his patrons ( the king and queen). The rulers sent him back out with a mission of gaining a substantial foothold within these trade routes. Traveling  back to the place full of very peaceful ships, Vasco --- to Indian Ocean network thought of the Portuguese as merely nuisance pirates, it wasn’t until much bigger European countries like Belgium and France got involved that the Indian Ocean trade found itself in a muddle. 

Monsoons are caused by a change in atmospheric pressure with a flux in participation due to asymmetrical heating, or : monsoons cause the wind to blow a lot and some seasons have a lot of rain. This type of weather, especially being as it is predictable, provides places along the indian ocean coast to have a very specific climate much different than other places. Thus the Indian Ocean coast are given a one up on trade goods such as spices. These goods were coveted by the Europeans many of the goods being deemed as luxury items providing Indian Ocean places with an upper hand on monopolies.

Mombasa was a very important port city, becoming popular with Ibn Sinas’ travels in the 14th century. The coastal port was made a great place to trade with because of its generous supply of ivory, gold, and spices. Monsoons made for the climate to grow spices as the ocean winds placed many ships in the situation of having to stop at the port.

Surate was the biggest city in the Mughal Empire, a big provider to the trade of textiles. However there position in the Indian Ocean didn’t help them out when the Portuguese came into the Indian Ocean by monsoon, the winds leading them to the trade routes. Unfortunately Surate’s success got them trampled on by Europeans and soon there was a major spat over power within the Indian Ocean trade system.